2x08: Scientology (feat. Shelby Scott)

[00:00:00] Andrew Tate, Season 2 Episode 8, Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast, Cryptic County

[00:00:53] I'm the Scare You To Sleep Podcast. Enjoy. This happened when I was around 17 years old and is still happening now. At 17, I felt lost in the world and stuck in a job that I disliked with work colleagues that didn't like me.

[00:01:15] This had to do with my accent as I was quite well spoken so they thought that I was just some kind of rich kid.

[00:01:22] It all started on a Friday after work. The factory I worked in had a half day on Fridays, so I would just spend the rest of the day wandering around the city that I lived in.

[00:01:33] It had been a tough day of relentless mocking and I was reaching for my breaking point. I went around the city looking for a new job.

[00:01:43] I visited the police recruitment center, the army, navy, and the air force centers, and even the international red cross I just wanted to get away from it all.

[00:01:53] After a few hours, I had a bag full of career pamphlets and still no idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I turned a corner and immediately saw a sign sitting in front of me. I can remember it so vividly now. It said,

[00:02:09] Free personality test. Are you curious about yourself? Come on in. I then looked up at the building and in a big fancy sign outside it said, The Church of Scientology. Now before I continue, yes, I already knew about Scientology. However, I had a morbid curiosity about it.

[00:02:32] I had heard all the horror stories and goings on inside the church, but Tom Cruise was my favorite actor and he seemed to have his life sorted out pretty well. My famous last words right there. So I went inside.

[00:02:46] I was immediately greeted by a very nice lady. She asked me what I was doing and what she could do for me today. I asked if I could speak to somebody in the church about that personality test. She smiled and said, I would be happy to.

[00:03:01] Please take a seat and I'll get someone to speak to you. After a minute, I was introduced to an older man named Alan. He was the head of my city's Scientology center.

[00:03:12] Alan took me into a small room to talk privately. When we entered, I immediately noticed a large picture of L. Ron Hubbard on the wall. We sat down and we had a nice talk. I told him about how I was unhappy, about where my life was going.

[00:03:27] I told him about how I wanted to leave plus all the trouble that I was having at work. He seemed genuinely concerned for me and I felt like he wanted to help. After a while of talking, I agreed to do the personality test.

[00:03:42] He gave me the test and left the room saying to give the test to the receptionist after I had finished. Two hours later, I finished it. Not joking, that's how long it took. It was around 500 questions about anything and everything.

[00:03:58] I handed it to the receptionist and she told me that it would take some time to process. In the meantime, Alan had told her to take me to the private cinema to show me a film.

[00:04:10] I thought it was just going to be some old room in the back with a TV on the wall. But no, they did indeed have a private cinema. It could seat around 50 people and had a large screen in the front.

[00:04:24] It did feel a bit weird being by myself in a cinema owned by Scientology. Anyway, I sat down and they played me the film. It was about 30 minutes long and consisted of a narrator explaining those strange feelings you sometimes get with some mediocre acting following along.

[00:04:42] I remember a section about how much you doubt yourself, knowing you have locked a door but going back to check multiple times.

[00:04:51] At one point the film showed how a past event that happened to your mother while she was pregnant with you could affect your life in a negative way. For example, your mother was sick on a flight so you were scared of flying.

[00:05:04] I also vaguely remember something about rotten eggs and how much an event involving them can hurt you. I know it sounds absurd but in some ways the film really made sense to me.

[00:05:15] When the film was done, I was taken to Alan's office and he told me my results. He told me I was extremely depressed, one of the most unmotivated people he had ever met, lacking cognitive thinking and I was a waste of talent.

[00:05:31] Now this made me very upset but Alan said he could help me. He gave me about four books and a DVD. He told me to read the books and watch the film before my course.

[00:05:43] I asked what course and Alan told me he had signed me up to do a course at the center. He convinced me that if I didn't do this course that my life would soon spiral out of control.

[00:05:55] He made me hand over a lot of money for the course and said that I would receive an email about the course which was in a month's time. I left the center, ran home and immediately started reading the books that I was given.

[00:06:07] This happened all over the weekend. I had basically locked myself in my room and did nothing but read and reread those books and watch the DVD over and over again. Over the next week I began taking notes about myself and my family.

[00:06:23] I emailed Alan with questions and concerns. I started resenting my mother for my life. I began to think that she was the problem, that everything bad that happened to me was the result of her.

[00:06:36] I started to treat her badly, swearing at her and I did my best to ignore her. When I emailed Alan about my mother he told me that if she was the catalyst for my problems then maybe I should consider disconnecting from her. And I took that bullshit seriously.

[00:06:56] I made plans to totally leave her out of my life. A week before my course I developed some kind of God complex towards everyone around me. What I read in those books told me what I had become or what I could become.

[00:07:12] I saw everyone in my family as below me. I really became a truly spiteful person. Just days before my course I was confronted by my mother and father. They said they were concerned about me and they searched my room.

[00:07:27] My dad took out all of my Scientology books and the DVD. I was outraged. I screamed and cursed at my parents. I said horrible wicked things to them. I told them how I was going to leave them and how I never wanted to see them again.

[00:07:42] Hours of arguing back and forth, tears and crying. However in the end they did convince me that the church was a bad place. They said if I was so miserable at work then I should have told them. And that's true.

[00:07:56] To this day I can't believe I didn't say anything to them. Instead I went to Scientology. That night after the arguing stopped they sat me down and comforted me. I really couldn't believe it. After the way that I had treated them for the past three weeks,

[00:08:13] they still cared for me. The next day I emailed Alan and told him that I would not be coming back to the church. He quickly got back to me asking why. Asking if my family was the reason that I was being forced not to go.

[00:08:28] However I just ignored him. The emails that I would receive in the next few weeks were mad. He told me stuff like, I should leave my family now and I could stay at the church. He tried to convince me that it was all because of my mother.

[00:08:44] He even emailed me to say something along the lines of, he won't be surprised if he read in the papers that I was found dead by suicide. I was very sure he crossed the line there but I just kept ignoring him.

[00:09:00] The strangest email I got was one in binary code with ones and zeros. I used the binary code translator but it all came back as mixed up letters and numbers. None of it made sense. Eventually I blocked him. However it still hasn't stopped.

[00:09:19] About two or three times a year I'll get an email from the church either asking me how I am or asking me about my family. When I get them I immediately block the email address but they just keep coming. It's always something new and it's always someone new

[00:09:36] saying that they heard about my quote unquote case and they were worried about me. The whole reason I'm writing this is because I got one the other day and I thought it would make a good warning. Please, I beg of you, don't go to the church of Scientology.

[00:09:54] If they can make me into a spiteful degenerate in just a few hours then what can they do to a person in a few months or years? If anyone has any idea how to block the entire religion or cult from my email please let me know.

[00:10:12] And if you're lost in life, sad or upset please talk to your family, friends or a doctor. When you're down don't let others make you into a monster. This is from me. After this event I got help and I'm a happy confident person now.

[00:10:28] Thank you so much for listening. Oh and Alan if you're reading this, you made me into a monster. And let's not meet. I was around 8 to 9 years old when this all happened so most of the background was told to me later

[00:10:47] but I still remember all of the events that took place. First off, a little backstory. This guy, referred to as New Guy here but actually had a pretty badass and unique name had recently moved into the apartment next to us on the second floor.

[00:11:01] It was an outdoor apartment situation so we had railings that opened up fully to the outside and could see the trees, the little bridge we had over a stream, etc. It was okay, but sometimes you never knew who was in those apartments

[00:11:15] a little important due to seeing some things later. He ended up asking us to help him move in and if he was okay hanging in our apartment due to the AC being repaired in his place. It was around 105 that day.

[00:11:28] We were all hitting it off and he seemed like a really nice guy. In the upcoming days and weeks he would always be really nice to us if we ever passed by his place when he was heading out or if he ever needed to borrow something.

[00:11:40] Something that kinda was weird to my 8 year old self was how he really got into my mom for a little bit. This was after a recent split with my sperm donor so I assumed she was just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

[00:11:52] And he was a great guy, so why not? It was kinda obvious here and there about how he was super flirty with her and it was kinda a little weird overall. And he got very friendly with me too which seemed a little off at times.

[00:12:07] Almost like he was just really trying too hard to get on our good side. Here's the more juicy part. It was around 9 at night one night and my mom was just finishing up dinner. I was on my PS2 playing a game I had just recently been gifted.

[00:12:22] I think it was God of War 2 or something. When we heard this really hard knock at our door. My mom just yelled to wait a second while the knocking turned to pounding. My mom got there and before she said anything, she hushed up really fast.

[00:12:37] I turned around and saw around 3 local SWAT officers fully geared with rifles standing there. I was terrified since this was the first time I've ever seen any gun that big or any officers at our door like that.

[00:12:51] They quickly asked us to follow them as there was a very dangerous threat happening not too far from us. Little did we know how far it really was. They also asked to use our apartment as a vantage point and such for whatever was going on.

[00:13:06] My mom, trying to crack some jokes to lighten the mood as she was just as scared as me, told them to make sure the pot is off the stove or she'll forward them the bill, but agreed. They rushed us down the farthest hallway,

[00:13:19] which to us seemed weird since the stairs were just around the corner next to our apartment. As we were walking, we saw some other people on the ground level just kind of staking out the area where we were

[00:13:31] and I as an 8 year old nearly shit myself at the sight of all these officers pointing guns in my general direction. We were rushed into the manager's building on the opposite side of the complex only to find about 4 other apartment tenants were also there.

[00:13:46] We recognized them as the 4 others right surrounding us, except for the new guy. To make this portion short, we were stuck in there until maybe 2am just waiting for an all clear to be escorted back to our houses.

[00:13:59] Happily, nothing was damaged but we were all really shaken up. My mom even asked me if I wanted to stay home and I said no since we were watching a movie for a field trip the next day at school.

[00:14:10] I was a full on oblivious dumbass, not gonna lie. It never really crossed my mind what happened that night and I just assumed it was some sort of random event. My mom later told me what really happened when I was around 13, far away from that apartment.

[00:14:27] Basically, what happened was a few days prior, the new guy had told his friend he was feeling majorly suicidal and how horrible he had been handling his emotions. I didn't know this but the guy was on leave for suffering PTSD and schizophrenia, I think

[00:14:43] from his time in battle and apparently stopped his meds. His friend ended up calling the police who called him where he talked about his plan to kill himself and quote unquote maybe a few others.

[00:14:57] I'm glad his friend called because in his words he was going to kill around 12 people that night and himself. He wanted to kill the apartment next to us and the three under us. He wanted to keep me and my mom hostage before killing us and himself

[00:15:11] because they were the nicest to me since I moved in. He targeted us for being nice to him. Seriously, he wanted to keep us hostage for as long as he could, murder us and then kill himself just because we wanted to be decent neighbors to a new guy.

[00:15:28] The officers were able to apprehend him before anything actually happened after a few hours standoff and then just allowed us to go back after a bit of searching and stuff.

[00:15:38] Making sure the place was safe, we did see more officers coming to the apartment within the next few days just to look at some things that were maybe of interest but everything ended pretty quickly.

[00:15:50] Overall it just pretty much made us tenants who were stuck together for hours a lot closer to each other even though we all left soon after. Neighbor with a badass name who planned to kill us for our hospitality,

[00:16:03] as much as I wish for your mental state to have gotten better and your life to be great, let's not meet ever again. So this happened when I was in 7th grade, a 12 year old.

[00:16:25] At the time, it was just my mom, my brother and I living in a rental in a run down low income area. We moved in during the summer before the school year had started and were welcomed by our next door neighbor which wasn't too uncommon

[00:16:40] but not super common at the same time for that area in Oregon. My mom worked 8 to 5 every day so my little brother and I would ride the bus home from school.

[00:16:51] My cousin would also sometimes ride back to the house with us and her parents would pick her up later. One day I came home and I noticed that our only small laptop that we owned was gone off of the counter. I figured my mom had moved it.

[00:17:09] Later when my mom came home, we found that a lot of other things were missing as well like my iPod and wallet and my mom's safe with her handgun in it and a lot of family valuables.

[00:17:21] We called the cops and reported a robbery and they came to investigate. They determined the person probably slid through the doggy door leading into the garage and then entered the house through our unlocked garage door.

[00:17:35] Cops stayed in their cars on the curb all night and said that they would watch our house more than normal. I was terrified all night and my brother and I slept in my mom's room. The next day we locked all of our doors.

[00:17:50] It was Wednesday and was a random half day at school so we rode the bus home around noon and my cousin came with while my brother went to a friend's house for the afternoon to hang out.

[00:18:03] I used the key under the mat that my mom laid for me and my cousin and I hung out for about an hour or two until her mom came and picked her up.

[00:18:12] After she left, I heard the doorknob of the closet right next to the front door slowly open and out comes this skinny, what looked like 35 year old man that I recognized as our next door neighbor.

[00:18:29] He seemed to be shaking, intense eyes, had a really unhealthy look to him because of his extremely sunken in face. Terrified, I'm in the living room just standing, looking at him while he looks at me.

[00:18:45] With a surprise on his face, and I think he thought everyone had left when my cousin did, his face changed to an amused smirk when I believe he realized that I was alone in the house.

[00:19:02] He begins to walk towards me while I stand there shocked, not sure of what to do. He grabs me really hard on my shoulders and then tells me that I'm pretty. He then begins to pull me into him. And I think he licked me.

[00:19:22] I don't know, he seemed crazy and excitable with this intense look in his eyes. I instinctively jump and buckle my knees to allow my full weight to be the force that rips me from his grips and fall onto my butt.

[00:19:38] He then bends down for me when I heel kick him in the nuts as hard as I can. I played soccer at the time and practiced wrestling with my older brother and neighbor's kids a lot. He yells and falls to his knees cupping himself.

[00:19:54] I use that time to run past him to my front door. I open it and run to a kids house that I know down the road that I ride the bus with. It was about six houses down. He and his mom called the cops while I waited.

[00:20:08] The cops got to the house and he wasn't there anymore but had managed to steal a few more valuables. I gave my testimony that it was our next door neighbor and he was later caught that same day selling some of the stuff at a pawn shop in town.

[00:20:24] He ended up being on crystal meth, stealing our stuff to sell and pay for his addiction. He was super weak from all of the drug abuse which is probably why I was able to get away from him.

[00:20:37] He also was apparently somewhat high which he claimed heightened him sexually which is why he spontaneously decided to attack me while I was alone. Also, he looked like he was in his mid late 30s but he was actually just 26.

[00:20:54] He had apparently watched us for a few months learning our schedules for when we left and got home.

[00:21:00] He took the time to take the key from under our door mat while we were gone, get a copy and then put the original back under the mat for my brother and I to use when we got home.

[00:21:11] The cops were surprised that he was smart enough to do that as he seemed to be mostly dimwitted with everything else due to the drug abuse.

[00:21:20] Either way, I testified against his physical attack and he got a few decades of jail time being that he was already on parole for drugs. I was terrified and slept in my mom's room for the next year. So let's never meet again, creepy meth addict neighbor.

[00:21:37] This happened a long time ago when I was younger and I have a really bad memory. This is just me recounting the memory to the best of my ability and what I was told.

[00:21:54] I also want to preface this story that this story takes place somewhere in Indonesia where it's more commonplace to have maids in your household. When I was younger, I had a strong relationship with my extended family. To me, it was normal to be close with your extended family.

[00:22:10] And when I mean extended, I don't even know how they're related to me. In particular, I was close with my grand aunt's family, calling her Grand Aunt Sheila, whose daughters slash in-laws were like my big sisters.

[00:22:23] Being the eldest child, I liked being babied by them since I was always expected to be the big sister for my little brother. This is important for later. I was maybe 11 years old or younger, neither my parents and I could remember when exactly it happened.

[00:22:38] I just want to say as a kid, I loved milk. I still do, though I tend to stick with skim milk now. When I was younger, I had a favorite local brand that had the usual strawberry flavor. The brand was called Ultra Milk.

[00:22:52] It was always cool that I was drinking something pink. Unbeknownst to my parents, a gift basket had showed up to our doorsteps and the maids had taken in the gift, thinking it was a present from one of my mother's friends.

[00:23:04] My parents had even seen the gift basket and didn't think much of it. It was full of fruit, sweets, etc., the usual kind of thing you would send to someone maybe on a special occasion.

[00:23:14] It should have been weird that there wasn't a special occasion, but another weird part was that usually gift baskets had a card or something to indicate where it had come from.

[00:23:25] There was no indication from who it had come from, but the maids had overlooked it and my parents didn't notice at the time. They had assumed the head maid had checked it through. She didn't.

[00:23:36] In the gift basket, there was my favorite tiny carton of my favorite milk, even strawberry flavored. I had lessons with a tutor and oftentimes, the maid accompanying me to the lesson would bring me snacks or food since the tutoring would take a few hours.

[00:23:51] I was at my tutor's house and she was teaching me about the homework I got that day when I got thirsty and I got my carton of milk to take a sip out of.

[00:23:59] I was ready to take a sip of the extremely sweet, artificially flavored strawberry milky goodness, but something was wrong. It didn't taste right. I don't remember what it did taste like, but I knew that it was wrong.

[00:24:16] I remember describing to my parents that it felt like I licked the bottom of a foot of a metal framed chair I had in my room at my desk. It just tasted awful.

[00:24:27] Thinking that maybe it was spoiled, my mom had warned me about drinking spoiled milk and how it can really upset your stomach. I immediately, without swallowing, grabbed some tissues at the table and spat out the mouthful into a tissue.

[00:24:39] I was surprised to see sort of weird metallic beads in it, like metal, but it was liquid. I had never seen anything like it and I was confused. My tutor was even more confused and horrified that I had just spat out a strange metallic substance from my mouth.

[00:24:58] I didn't really understand what was going on, but my tutor asked to take the carton of milk where I had tried to drink from and told me to just continue working while she went to investigate.

[00:25:07] Apparently, my tutor and her head maid went outside and poured a bit of the milk into a tissue and there was more of this weird metal liquid in it.

[00:25:16] She asked me if I had drank any of it and I told her that maybe I took a sip and swallowed before I realized that something bad was in there. After that, my tutor apparently called my mom and told her that I had been possibly poisoned.

[00:25:29] I went home without finishing my lesson, becoming slightly concerned that maybe something was wrong. I went home and I don't really remember what happened after that. There wasn't a poison center in my country and no emergency services that would really respond, third world country and all that.

[00:25:45] So my parents took me to a doctor to have blood tests. I remember being pulled out of school. My mom wanted me to stay home from school for the next few days, which was great for me.

[00:25:54] No one told me the severity of the situation and my mom just told me that she wanted me to chill at home for a while. No school? I get to have fun? No way!

[00:26:03] So I did. I stayed home and watched Avatar The Last Airbender on DVD while my parents were fretting over the idea that I might have been poisoned by mercury. The gift basket, which had already been taken apart and stored to eat for later.

[00:26:16] It was all reassembled and my parents tried to go with this to the police. They couldn't really do anything since we literally had no leads on where this gift basket had come from. And it had no card and the police really couldn't care less about our situation.

[00:26:30] Again, third world country. I don't really know what happened other than I was pretty cool with staying home and playing.

[00:26:37] My life at home wasn't perfect, got some issues with my parents, but they were really nice to me during that time so I enjoyed it a lot since I didn't really understand. I think my parents kept a lot from me to keep me from getting scared.

[00:26:50] My parents even took me overseas to Singapore, even taking the liquid found in the carton with them in a tin or whatever to show the doctors there, where I got tested some more and didn't seem to have any signs of poisoning. I didn't swallow enough of it.

[00:27:06] I'm not really sure if it really was mercury, no one has ever told me, but at the end of the day everyone was glad that I didn't drink enough of it to get affected by whatever it was. Now, to get into the suspect part.

[00:27:19] My parents later told me that they had a sneaking suspicion that it was possible that Grand Aunt Sheila was the one who tried to poison me.

[00:27:27] I didn't know this at the time, but around the time of the incident, Grand Aunt Sheila was found to have stolen gold and jewelry from my parents' store for years, worth thousands.

[00:27:36] My parents were furious and wanted to report her to the authorities, but my grandma, her sister, loved her too much and instead just cut contact with her.

[00:27:44] Since then, Grand Aunt Sheila had seemed to want to enact a vengeance if we're being caught and has been trying to get back at us. My mom warned me that I couldn't play with the big sisters, Grand Aunt Sheila's daughters anymore since they did something very bad

[00:28:00] and to never get in a car with them if they showed up at my school. But it didn't click in my mind until now. Thinking back, Grand Aunt Sheila was close enough to me to know that I loved drinking milk and maybe tried to hurt my family,

[00:28:13] even if it meant hurting her grandniece, not sure what I would be to her. We could never confirm it was her, but Grand Aunt Sheila has continued to be a thorn in my family's side for years now,

[00:28:23] though my parents have learned a lesson and ensured that whenever we received a gift basket, there had to be a name on it. My grandmother doesn't believe her sister did it, though, but my parents firmly believe that she was responsible,

[00:28:36] but we have no proof other than her horrible character. We've received weird gifts like black seeds and hair that were supposedly some sort of witchcraft thingy. Witchcraft and sorcery is a popular thing in Indonesia, believe it or not.

[00:28:50] We assumed that this was all from Grand Aunt Sheila, who still lived in the same city as us. It only made sense. My parents never bought me the Ultra Milk brand again, which I was okay with since that moment spoiled the Ultra Milk brand to me.

[00:29:06] I was reminded of this story while drinking strawberry milk the other day. Different brand. I'm no longer living in Indonesia, not in the same country as Grand Aunt Sheila. Even so.

[00:29:18] To Grand Aunt Sheila or whoever was the one who tried to spike a carton of strawberry milk to poison an 11-year-old girl, Let's Not Meet. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast.

[00:29:40] This week you have heard my experience with the Church of Scientology by Reddit user TheAflare, The New Next Door Neighbor by Nravels, Don't Ever Leave Your Key Under The Mat by Reddit user TastyApples4, and finally, Strawberry Milk with a Side of Mercury by Azura J.

[00:30:01] Thanks again to Shelby Scott for joining me this week and telling a couple of stories. Her podcast, Scare You to Sleep, is a weekly podcast where she reads several spooky stories and uses sound effects that really do immerse you into a world of terror.

[00:30:16] She reads each story in this very soothing voice that acts as kind of a siren to the terrifying content that you'll hear. There are frequent special episodes on her show, like True Tales where she reads user-submitted spooky experiences just like we do here on Let's Not Meet.

[00:30:33] She even does these stories called Guided Nightmares where she uses guided meditation techniques to help you reach a level of relaxation, and it makes you feel like you're the star of your own horror story. It's really interesting, and she has such a wonderful voice and great delivery.

[00:30:50] I highly recommend this podcast. I've gone through and listened to every episode that I could before doing this episode this week, and I'm very impressed. Check her out at ScareYouToSleep.com or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts. Just search Scare You to Sleep.

[00:31:07] And don't forget if you're a patron and you support the show, I released a brand new bonus episode this weekend. Head over to Patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet podcast if you'd like to sign up and hear all of the bonus stories that I release.

[00:31:20] And don't forget to send in your stories to Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com. I really do read every story that I receive and will feature any of them on the show that I feel is a good fit.

[00:31:32] I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.